Photography Atelier

Dead Reckoning

Where do we go when we die? Where do we seek solace?

I work in hospice and much of my attention centers on soothing other people’s anxiety about death. But what about my own? Despite a lifelong pattern of churchgoing, choir singing and worship in indoor spaces, I confess I lack a natural faith. Rather, my curiosity and questioning have taken root in the outside world, where I encounter a life force that is promising, universal, and perpetual. The outdoors is my sanctuary; walking on trails in New England is my own form of prayer.

This project explores spaces that offer refuge in the face of death anxiety – my own or others’.

For some, the purpose-built, “always open” chapels and meditation rooms in hospitals and hospice houses are safe harbors offering quietude, ritual, and comfort along a fraught medical journey at end of life. For others, the natural world reveals itself as a sacred ground. Punctuated by unexpected washes of light and devoid of people, these seemingly disparate settings draw attention to the relationship between our external environments and our internal worlds of beliefs and emotions.

Dead Reckoning is an invitation to stillness, attention, and contemplation – indoors and outdoors –  for those confronting the unsettling questions that death and dying usher in.